INPATIENT CAMHS DESIGN
Part of the‘toolkit’ to help young people recover
James Christian, an architect and director of multidisciplinary architecture and design studio, Projects Office, and his colleague, Creative strategist and director, Megan Charnley, report on the practice’s design of the interior of the CAMHS unit at Edinburgh’s new Royal Hospital for Children and Young People. They explain that ‘through a user-centred design approach’, they produced ‘a collaboratively developed and cohesive set of designs which push the boundaries of established thought about mental healthcare environments’.
Edinburgh’s new Royal Hospital for Children and Young People (RHCYP) brings together departments from across the city into a new purpose-built building. Following an open competition run by Ginkgo Projects, our architectural practice, Projects Office, was appointed to design the interiors of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) unit within the new hospital, including outpatient areas, courtyards, and inpatient facilities, for children aged from 5 to 18 years’ old. Through a user-centred design approach, we produced a collaboratively developed and cohesive set of designs which push the boundaries of established thought about mental healthcare environments. It was a great pleasure to create these vibrant and unconventional healing spaces with the input, support, and enthusiasm of NHS staff, patients, and families, and in this article we will discuss how the project was developed, and some of the key things we learned along the way.
A kit of parts approach helped facilitate conversation with staff on priority levels for the interventions. About the practice
Projects Office was founded in 2015 by Megan Charnley, James Christian, and Bethan Kay, who met at the Royal College of Art in 2009. Since the inception of our practice, we have undertaken a broad range of commissions in both the public and private sectors – from workplaces for start-up companies, to installations in the public realm. Our work combines a joyful aesthetic with serious design quality, rigorous research with a people-centred approach, and bold ideas with fine attention to detail. We are particularly interested in projects which involve, celebrate, sustain, and empower communities, at work, at play, or in the city.
Our practice ethos of ‘Fantastic Pragmatism’ underlines our approach to all of our projects – we think laterally, solve problems imaginatively, and take fun seriously. The design of the Edinburgh CAMHS unit was among the first significant commissions for our fledgling architecture practice, and gave us the opportunity to combine our user-led design approach
THE NETWORK | JANUARY 2022
with an agile methodology to create unique and effective spaces and a bespoke design identity in the context of a complex healthcare construction project.
A new hospital
The CAMHS unit is situated alongside the new RHCYP, a building designed by HLM Architects for NHS Lothian. Located on the BioQuarter site in the Little France area of Edinburgh, and adjacent to the Royal Infirmary, it re-provides the former Royal Hospital for Sick Children (RHSC) – known locally as the ‘Sick Kids’ – as well as the Department of Clinical Neurosciences (DCN) for adult patients. The new facility brings together these distinct acute services into a new centre of excellence. The brief for the new CAMHS unit called for enhancement to the interior design of a range of spaces, including outpatient consultation rooms, waiting areas, courtyards, inpatient bedrooms, and communal areas. The project was part of Beyond Walls, an art and therapeutic
design programme delivered by public arts and cultural producers, Ginkgo Projects, for NHS Lothian, funded by the Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity. This £5 million programme consists of over 20 projects across the new building, and forms one of the largest art in healthcare programmes in the UK. Projects Office was appointed as designer for the CAMHS unit following an open competition in 2015.
Relocating two existing CAMHS units
Central to the project brief was the requirement to work with the NHS to overcome the challenges of relocating two existing CAMHS units, previously located in different locations in South Edinburgh, into a single facility at the new children’s hospital. The first unit, providing services for young people aged between 12 and 18, was located on a large parkland hospital site in the Morningside area of the city. Comprising a day programme, an inpatient unit, the Early Psychosis Support Service,
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